2010 Churchill Fellow Tracey Clarke embarked on her five week journey to the USA at the start of September to research the growing US Virtual Assistance Industry.
Her immediate love of the place and impression was the overwhelming first-class hospitality and incredible friendliness from everyone, an insatiable appetite to learn, succeed and the infectious entrepreneurial vision and spirit of those she met. Drawing a comparison between working cultures in the US and UK was found to be highly intriguing.
Tracey’s visit to Washington, DC during the record high temperatures was a wonderful experience. The opportunity to meet up with two professors at VCU Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, who were concentrating on developing further teleworking projects was fantastic. An impressive visit to Capital One’s hub of operations in Virginia provided a wealth of new ways and options in which employees are empowered to work in a much more productive, inviting and enjoyable environment.
Meeting with the VADFW group of professional Virtual Assistants offering their expert virtual office services to businesses was a real treat enabling Tracey to make new great friends and gather important VA research in the areas of Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas.
Northern California taking in Sacramento and San Francisco opened up opportunities to visit Sierra College spending time with Professor Cyndi Dunn who created and delivers the Virtual Office Professional Degree Course which constantly fills its online class places of eager learners to become home working Virtual Assistants.
The biggest impact from this fantastic journey was the American attitude to work, a deep desire to strive and do well, a very strong work ethic and such impressive customer service and communication skills wherever visited, providing Tracey with a worthwhile experience and insurmountable wealth of research.
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Thursday 7 October – live presenting at the IVAA 2010 Online Summit
This was good fun and a new experience for myself. Taking part along with Prof. Cyndi Dunn we talked about the Virtual Office Professional Degree Course live online for the IVAA (International Virtual Assistants Association) 2010 Summit. Using a software platform called ‘GoToMyWebinar’ this allowed us to present to a live audience while showing a PowerPoint Presentation and taking questions from people who had subscribed to the Summit. I was so glad we each had a moderator to guide us and hold our hands throughout the telephone conference session. It went very well and very quickly along with offering a door prize for the winner to receive a one hour mentoring session from myself on running a VA business.
Wednesday 6 October – VA gathering at Julie Fuqua’s home in Sacramento
This was a wonderful opportunity to meet up with some of the students I had previously assisted teaching early in the year as part of their Virtual Office Professional Degree Course, along with meeting other fellow VA’s early in their business start up and those who had been going a good while.
Julie very kindly hosted the event at her home and provided great food and drinks for everyone. It was a good experience to chat and interact with everyone to find out how they were progressing.
Sharon Broughton, an implementation coach in Virtual Assistance was really interesting to speak with. She runs different courses and specialises in the shopping cart creation and online marketing targeting top end larger corporate companies, allowing her to charge much higher prices for her expert services.
It was so good to finally put faces to names from the emails and Skype phone calls previously made over the last year.
Julie very kindly hosted the event at her home and provided great food and drinks for everyone. It was a good experience to chat and interact with everyone to find out how they were progressing.
Sharon Broughton, an implementation coach in Virtual Assistance was really interesting to speak with. She runs different courses and specialises in the shopping cart creation and online marketing targeting top end larger corporate companies, allowing her to charge much higher prices for her expert services.
It was so good to finally put faces to names from the emails and Skype phone calls previously made over the last year.
Wednesday 6 October – Lunch time gathering with guests from Sierra College
Luis Sanchez, Dean at Sierra College invited us to a lunchtime meeting along with Prof. Cyndi Dunn and Prof. Denise Bushnell from Sierra College, Michelle Ulrich from Virtual Business Marketing and Patricia Beckman from Cybertary.
We all shared information about each of our businesses/occupations discovering how each started and grew their exciting careers in the virtual world.
Luis and Denise were incredibly friendly and very keen to keep in touch. We had previously met with Michelle on an earlier occasion and were glad to learn her thoughts around the growing VA industry especially covering the topic of people with disabilities and illnesses that stopped them getting work in the traditional office setting. Still seen as a huge barrier to employers, they felt that employers were still wary of working with disadvantaged people due to fear of recriminations. When asked about details on current and past students attending the Virtual Office Professional Degree Online course, there was no information available about the number of people who may have had disabilities and what made them choose this particular career path.
Patricia was very interesting to chat with, her company Cybertary offers Virtual Assistant Franchises throughout the USA. It was intriguing to discover her journey taking the business to the next level with a highly successful team of VA’s providing professional hourly rate services to businesses.
It was highlighted that many Chambers of Commerce were still unaware of the Virtual Assistance Industry and there was very little connection with government regards promoting Virtual Assistance as another career option to the unemployed. The VA term is still unheard of within many industries in the US and doesn’t have a recognised title on business listings for internet directories, still recorded under ‘secretarial services’.
There was a definite feel from the colleges and education in the US that qualifications were deemed more important than experience. The higher degree gained the better options on the jobs/career ladder would be open to you. Where as in the UK it seems to be the opposite way round, solid experience in the relevant role is more preferred, with experience of knowing that some employers don't always have time to train a new comer.
We all shared information about each of our businesses/occupations discovering how each started and grew their exciting careers in the virtual world.
Luis and Denise were incredibly friendly and very keen to keep in touch. We had previously met with Michelle on an earlier occasion and were glad to learn her thoughts around the growing VA industry especially covering the topic of people with disabilities and illnesses that stopped them getting work in the traditional office setting. Still seen as a huge barrier to employers, they felt that employers were still wary of working with disadvantaged people due to fear of recriminations. When asked about details on current and past students attending the Virtual Office Professional Degree Online course, there was no information available about the number of people who may have had disabilities and what made them choose this particular career path.
Patricia was very interesting to chat with, her company Cybertary offers Virtual Assistant Franchises throughout the USA. It was intriguing to discover her journey taking the business to the next level with a highly successful team of VA’s providing professional hourly rate services to businesses.
It was highlighted that many Chambers of Commerce were still unaware of the Virtual Assistance Industry and there was very little connection with government regards promoting Virtual Assistance as another career option to the unemployed. The VA term is still unheard of within many industries in the US and doesn’t have a recognised title on business listings for internet directories, still recorded under ‘secretarial services’.
There was a definite feel from the colleges and education in the US that qualifications were deemed more important than experience. The higher degree gained the better options on the jobs/career ladder would be open to you. Where as in the UK it seems to be the opposite way round, solid experience in the relevant role is more preferred, with experience of knowing that some employers don't always have time to train a new comer.
Friday 1 to Monday 4 October – Visit to San Francisco
A great opportunity to visit the area of San Francisco, driving over Golden Gate Bridge was fantastic, the bay area around Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 were wonderful to see.
The Trolley Bus tour was a fun ride through the city, up and down the really steep streets just like the film clips from the Steve McQueen film Bullitt.
China Town was exciting to see, so different to the rest of the city with so many different kinds of shops to visit.
On Monday we visited the ‘Hub – Bay Area’ in downtown Berkeley in San Francisco.
Very similar to the Hub in London’s King Cross but on a smaller scale, this was an interesting organisation to visit. A nice young man called Hai Vo showed us around the building and explained how the ‘Hub’ system worked. The project was a socially run organisation that enabled businesses to use the premises as required on a flexible basis. So for example they offered the use of the facilities for 5 hours for $25 per month, so you could literally come along with your laptop and plug in as and when you want to.
The Trolley Bus tour was a fun ride through the city, up and down the really steep streets just like the film clips from the Steve McQueen film Bullitt.
China Town was exciting to see, so different to the rest of the city with so many different kinds of shops to visit.
On Monday we visited the ‘Hub – Bay Area’ in downtown Berkeley in San Francisco.
Very similar to the Hub in London’s King Cross but on a smaller scale, this was an interesting organisation to visit. A nice young man called Hai Vo showed us around the building and explained how the ‘Hub’ system worked. The project was a socially run organisation that enabled businesses to use the premises as required on a flexible basis. So for example they offered the use of the facilities for 5 hours for $25 per month, so you could literally come along with your laptop and plug in as and when you want to.
Thursday 30 September – Meeting with Roietta Fulgham at American River College
I had previously met Roietta two years ago on her visit to Colchester and Cambridge in the UK on an international business convention along with Prof. Cyndi Dunn from Sierra College. Roietta teaches part of the Virtual Office Professional Degree course online at American River College along with being the President for the CBEA California Business Education Association in Sacramento.
She gave us a tour of the college and introduced us to many of her teaching colleagues who were very interesting to chat with, getting a comprehensive insight into what their thoughts were on subjects like education, health, politics in general and how they compare between the US and UK. She explained that over the last few years unfortunately businesses have become less and less involved with colleges and universities, creating less interaction, sharing experiences and knowledge with students. She also felt there was very little interaction with the Chambers of Commerce too.
She gave us a tour of the college and introduced us to many of her teaching colleagues who were very interesting to chat with, getting a comprehensive insight into what their thoughts were on subjects like education, health, politics in general and how they compare between the US and UK. She explained that over the last few years unfortunately businesses have become less and less involved with colleges and universities, creating less interaction, sharing experiences and knowledge with students. She also felt there was very little interaction with the Chambers of Commerce too.
Monday, 4 October 2010
Tuesday 28 September - Meet up with Sarah Herbert and Laura Bumpas at Sierra Commons
We stayed with Laura Bumpas and her family in Foresthill near Auburn in the Lake Tahoe area from Monday 27 to Thursday 30 September and had a most wonderful time.
The area they live in is wonderful, very peaceful, into the woods, definitely need a car for any transportation and beautiful to see the stars at night on the wooden decking which goes all round their house with some fantastic views.
On Tuesday we visited Donna Lake which took us through California and Nevada City and then onto Tahoe Lake which was absolutely magical. We also visited Harrah's Casino and enjoyed walking through the casino watching other people gambling on the card tables.
On Wednesday we met with Sarah Herbert a fellow VA from the local area at Sierra Commons in Nevada City. Sierra Commons is a purpose built building for business ignitors (start-ups) to work from offering numerous different options of working, for example hot desking.
Robert who ran the whole project showed us round the building which had open plan areas as well as closed off office space, a conference room and a sound proofed booth for working in and making telephone calls.
Robert explained how he had obtained funding to get the project off the ground and was currently looking to replicate this business space model in different places.
Robert was looking for a local Virtual Assistant to work on site at the building to look after the reception area dealing with enquiries and looking after requests from other businesses within the building.
Along with the opportunity of working for other clients and sourcing new clients at the same time - giving the VA chance to have more flexibility in working.
We hope to keep in touch with both Robert, Sarah and Laura and family.
The area they live in is wonderful, very peaceful, into the woods, definitely need a car for any transportation and beautiful to see the stars at night on the wooden decking which goes all round their house with some fantastic views.
On Tuesday we visited Donna Lake which took us through California and Nevada City and then onto Tahoe Lake which was absolutely magical. We also visited Harrah's Casino and enjoyed walking through the casino watching other people gambling on the card tables.
On Wednesday we met with Sarah Herbert a fellow VA from the local area at Sierra Commons in Nevada City. Sierra Commons is a purpose built building for business ignitors (start-ups) to work from offering numerous different options of working, for example hot desking.
Robert who ran the whole project showed us round the building which had open plan areas as well as closed off office space, a conference room and a sound proofed booth for working in and making telephone calls.
Robert explained how he had obtained funding to get the project off the ground and was currently looking to replicate this business space model in different places.
Robert was looking for a local Virtual Assistant to work on site at the building to look after the reception area dealing with enquiries and looking after requests from other businesses within the building.
Along with the opportunity of working for other clients and sourcing new clients at the same time - giving the VA chance to have more flexibility in working.
We hope to keep in touch with both Robert, Sarah and Laura and family.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Wednesday 23 September - Meet up with the VADFW Group in Irving
Today we met a fabulous group of ladies from the VADFW Dallas Fort Worth VA Network Group comprising of Lissa Duty; Julia Lilly; Kay Wright; Charity Van Fleet; Cindy Flood; Sharon Tousley; Tracy Smith and my partner Jamie Macleod (who thoroughly enjoyed the event). What a great lunchtime meet up we all had, a lovely meal thanks to the Glory House restaurant and we all did a lot of laughing which is always a good sign. Plenty of photographs taken afterwards – some funny ones too!
Tracy Smith invited me along to do a short talk/presentation about my Churchill Fellowship and what information research I would be doing during my trip to the USA. There was a good selection of start up VA’s along with those who had been going a good while, so plenty of questions and answers from all of us to share.
It was a really good opportunity to find out how big the VA industry was in Dallas and Fort Worth and to learn that this particular group had a membership of a 42 VA members, which Lissa and Julia organised regularly on a monthly lunchtime basis.
We each took a turn in introducing ourselves explaining what our main VA services were which highlighted a highly professional set of VA’s with some really strong and much needed skills to offer to businesses.
They all agreed that the term VA was still new to a lot of businesses and still under-recognised. We discussed the most preferred and best ways of marketing our skills with networking being the most productive form of meeting new people and building on making good contacts.
It was interesting to discover the background of each VA and how they evolved into taking the VA route. We all agreed working from home was wonderful and how important it was to create a good balance of attending network events to break up the monotony of working from home which can be lonely and the necessary need to meet and make friends with other fellow VA’s.
I thoroughly enjoyed answering questions on how I grew my own VA business, how I found other VA colleagues to sub-contract work to, which enabled me to visit the USA for 5 weeks on this fellowship leaving my clients in the capable hands of my colleagues Denise Shaw and Pippa Mell.
I learned a great deal of information from these ladies, especially how important the use of Social Networking was to a lot of their clients. Plus we talked about the different ways in which they charged for their services, either by the hour or on retainer basis.
We discussed the issue of some larger VA companies that had chosen to do down the route of franchising their VA business. There was a strong agreement that giving a person a territory to concentrate on getting business from seemed to go against the whole ethos of working as a Virtual Assistant which allows you to work for any company anywhere. But as the same time understood the option of buying into a franchise could be seen as a less scary/risky option as opposed to doing it alone.
My immediate impression of this group was an overwhelming wish to keep in touch with each of the ladies. They made both myself and Jamie very, very welcome, incredibly easy going and approachable, open to share, ask questions and so hospitable. Charity Van Fleet very kindly arranged an introduction to visit the Irving Chamber of Commerce, getting in touch with the organisation immediately after the lunch meeting to visit. Charity was a member of the Chamber and spoke very highly of how they helped small businesses.
We drove to the Irving Chamber of Commerce following Charity in the car and received a warm welcome and a great tour of the building which originally was a bank. The new technology used in the building was great to see. The lady who showed us round the building was very much aware of the term Virtual Assistance which was good to see and appeared to have good relationship with Charity. She gave us a fabulous run down of the demographic, economic, history of Irving and its central location relationship to other States in the US, with its continuous growing, innovative and exciting plans for the future. A thoroughly enjoyable visit.
Tracy Smith invited me along to do a short talk/presentation about my Churchill Fellowship and what information research I would be doing during my trip to the USA. There was a good selection of start up VA’s along with those who had been going a good while, so plenty of questions and answers from all of us to share.
It was a really good opportunity to find out how big the VA industry was in Dallas and Fort Worth and to learn that this particular group had a membership of a 42 VA members, which Lissa and Julia organised regularly on a monthly lunchtime basis.
We each took a turn in introducing ourselves explaining what our main VA services were which highlighted a highly professional set of VA’s with some really strong and much needed skills to offer to businesses.
They all agreed that the term VA was still new to a lot of businesses and still under-recognised. We discussed the most preferred and best ways of marketing our skills with networking being the most productive form of meeting new people and building on making good contacts.
It was interesting to discover the background of each VA and how they evolved into taking the VA route. We all agreed working from home was wonderful and how important it was to create a good balance of attending network events to break up the monotony of working from home which can be lonely and the necessary need to meet and make friends with other fellow VA’s.
I thoroughly enjoyed answering questions on how I grew my own VA business, how I found other VA colleagues to sub-contract work to, which enabled me to visit the USA for 5 weeks on this fellowship leaving my clients in the capable hands of my colleagues Denise Shaw and Pippa Mell.
I learned a great deal of information from these ladies, especially how important the use of Social Networking was to a lot of their clients. Plus we talked about the different ways in which they charged for their services, either by the hour or on retainer basis.
We discussed the issue of some larger VA companies that had chosen to do down the route of franchising their VA business. There was a strong agreement that giving a person a territory to concentrate on getting business from seemed to go against the whole ethos of working as a Virtual Assistant which allows you to work for any company anywhere. But as the same time understood the option of buying into a franchise could be seen as a less scary/risky option as opposed to doing it alone.
My immediate impression of this group was an overwhelming wish to keep in touch with each of the ladies. They made both myself and Jamie very, very welcome, incredibly easy going and approachable, open to share, ask questions and so hospitable. Charity Van Fleet very kindly arranged an introduction to visit the Irving Chamber of Commerce, getting in touch with the organisation immediately after the lunch meeting to visit. Charity was a member of the Chamber and spoke very highly of how they helped small businesses.
We drove to the Irving Chamber of Commerce following Charity in the car and received a warm welcome and a great tour of the building which originally was a bank. The new technology used in the building was great to see. The lady who showed us round the building was very much aware of the term Virtual Assistance which was good to see and appeared to have good relationship with Charity. She gave us a fabulous run down of the demographic, economic, history of Irving and its central location relationship to other States in the US, with its continuous growing, innovative and exciting plans for the future. A thoroughly enjoyable visit.
Monday, 20 September 2010
Meet up with Vesna Rafaty from Rafety Law Group
Friday 17 September
This particular meeting was arranged for my partner Jamie regarding his music as Vesna Rafaty is a music lawyer and also concentrates on Intellectual Property law.
Vesna was a delight to meet with, such a breath of fresh air to sit and chat with. Incredibly open and very frank with her thoughts and opinions, her approach was very positive with a constant appetite for new ideas and opportunities.
Once I explained what Virtual Assistance was and how the industry worked along with our reason for visiting the USA on our research study, she instantly told us about her new project and readily adopted the concept of VA finding it very appealing.
Her new venture, a little different to her day to day business dealings was an exciting new piece of virtual technology using cloud computing. This enables businesses to benefit from an alternative marketing tool for collecting feedback, responses, any kind of information relevant to your business.
This fantastic opportunity meeting Vesna who is based in Dallas will definitely be a valuable contact whom I hope to work with - this new piece of software could easily be offered under the growing list of VA Services we currently offer to our existing and potential new clients.
This particular meeting was arranged for my partner Jamie regarding his music as Vesna Rafaty is a music lawyer and also concentrates on Intellectual Property law.
Vesna was a delight to meet with, such a breath of fresh air to sit and chat with. Incredibly open and very frank with her thoughts and opinions, her approach was very positive with a constant appetite for new ideas and opportunities.
Once I explained what Virtual Assistance was and how the industry worked along with our reason for visiting the USA on our research study, she instantly told us about her new project and readily adopted the concept of VA finding it very appealing.
Her new venture, a little different to her day to day business dealings was an exciting new piece of virtual technology using cloud computing. This enables businesses to benefit from an alternative marketing tool for collecting feedback, responses, any kind of information relevant to your business.
This fantastic opportunity meeting Vesna who is based in Dallas will definitely be a valuable contact whom I hope to work with - this new piece of software could easily be offered under the growing list of VA Services we currently offer to our existing and potential new clients.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Wednesday 15 September – visit with Greater Richmond Partnership and Capital One
Met with the Greater Richmond Partnership and enjoyed our visit with Rowena Fratarcangelo, Gregory Wingfield and Sara Dunnigan. Rowena kindly took us to the Capital One head quarters the following morning based in west Richmond.
Rowena gave us a newspaper article from the Richmond Times business newspaper about ‘Working Moms Best Companies’. This talked about the top best companies to work for – specifically aimed at women.
Definitely an idea to do research in the UK to find out the top best companies for women/mums to work for, who offer the best benefits for flexible working.
The Capital One headquarters was a fantastic place of work to look around – a huge campus covering an area of about 100 acres employing around 7,000 people. The area comprised of about 8 buildings and a lot of parking space areas which were all packed to capacity with cars – a very busy place. Definitely needed a car to get around the place.
This actually provided us with a significant change in culture and a major different focus on looking after and retaining employees. The state of the art facilities and technology and innovative training and development tools gave a huge impression of how much this particular company invests in their employees.
What made a massive impact was how the layout of the offices/work space was provided for people. Basically an employee finds a preferred place (hot desk) to work from, logs on computer, uses instant messenger (similar to what we use on Skype) to show they’re logged on and ready to start work. The emphasis on the production of quality work, providing the right environment which gives the employee much more incentive, trust and flexibility was great to see actually working in a successful setting.
This particular visit provoked so many new ideas around the concept of virtual working.
They mentioned that generally on Friday’s the building can seem very empty due to a lot of employees working from home accessing their work remotely, logging in at home to do the work, again another flexible option for employees.
This gave rise to the concept of teleworking being virtual with the option of working from home with a mix of working on site at a purpose built office environment so employees get chance to interact with each other, attend meetings and training sessions, striking a good productive balance of work.
I did ask about the use of video conferencing due to the number of office bases in different states and countries – they explained that video conferencing was used regularly but still felt that technology was still not stable to the quality they really required e.g. someone would not be able to get sound or talk as part of the group call etc.
The actual buildings inside were extremely well thought out, lots of internal café areas for employees, places for relaxation with large tv screens, a fantastic indoor gym and lots of outside sporting areas as part of the campus for playing team games – very big on team building and getting people to integrate together.
It will be very interesting to look at the Capital One offices in Nottingham in England when we return from the US to find out if they too have adopted this way of flexible working and change in working culture.
Rowena gave us a newspaper article from the Richmond Times business newspaper about ‘Working Moms Best Companies’. This talked about the top best companies to work for – specifically aimed at women.
Definitely an idea to do research in the UK to find out the top best companies for women/mums to work for, who offer the best benefits for flexible working.
The Capital One headquarters was a fantastic place of work to look around – a huge campus covering an area of about 100 acres employing around 7,000 people. The area comprised of about 8 buildings and a lot of parking space areas which were all packed to capacity with cars – a very busy place. Definitely needed a car to get around the place.
This actually provided us with a significant change in culture and a major different focus on looking after and retaining employees. The state of the art facilities and technology and innovative training and development tools gave a huge impression of how much this particular company invests in their employees.
What made a massive impact was how the layout of the offices/work space was provided for people. Basically an employee finds a preferred place (hot desk) to work from, logs on computer, uses instant messenger (similar to what we use on Skype) to show they’re logged on and ready to start work. The emphasis on the production of quality work, providing the right environment which gives the employee much more incentive, trust and flexibility was great to see actually working in a successful setting.
This particular visit provoked so many new ideas around the concept of virtual working.
They mentioned that generally on Friday’s the building can seem very empty due to a lot of employees working from home accessing their work remotely, logging in at home to do the work, again another flexible option for employees.
This gave rise to the concept of teleworking being virtual with the option of working from home with a mix of working on site at a purpose built office environment so employees get chance to interact with each other, attend meetings and training sessions, striking a good productive balance of work.
I did ask about the use of video conferencing due to the number of office bases in different states and countries – they explained that video conferencing was used regularly but still felt that technology was still not stable to the quality they really required e.g. someone would not be able to get sound or talk as part of the group call etc.
The actual buildings inside were extremely well thought out, lots of internal café areas for employees, places for relaxation with large tv screens, a fantastic indoor gym and lots of outside sporting areas as part of the campus for playing team games – very big on team building and getting people to integrate together.
It will be very interesting to look at the Capital One offices in Nottingham in England when we return from the US to find out if they too have adopted this way of flexible working and change in working culture.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Monday 13 September - meeting with Virginia Commonwealth University
Met with Mike West and Katherine Inge from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia yesterday.
They have been working with organisations on telework projects which started about 6 to 7 years ago.
They ran these as pilot projects looking at what made a good home working teleworker, looking at the characteristics of a teleworker.
They did a survey on businesses in their local area to find out what policies and procedures they currently have in place around flexible working allowing employees to work from home. They ran a placement project with about 100 placements, a large percentage of these being veterans.
They raised the awareness of teleworking – pointing out that even now employers see teleworking as a reward to employees rather than being a necessity.
They carried out telework assessments, a process of vetting people to see how their typing skills and communications skills qualified, testing them on their telephone skills, customer service skills etc.
Katherine had more involvement on the self employment side and mentioned the ‘Self Employment Grant’ which was made available through the Office Disability and Policy Dept which was trialled throughout New York, Alaska and Florida.
The availability of Developed Start-up Projects – whereby interested people looking at going self employed can still receive Social Security Work Incentive payments and put money aside separately to save towards starting a new business while staying on benefits.
Katherine suggested that we pull together case studies showing the different processes/services/projects we work on for clients, what the procedure is, how long each piece of work takes, showing specifically what can be achieved. This in turn could be used as a PR marketing piece to raise awareness of home working virtual assistance and teleworking.
Mike and Katherine provided us with a fantastic pack to take away including:
• Video on ‘Self Employment – Start-up in the USA’
• Start-up resource documents on self employment
• A mentor guide to Increase Customized Employment Outcomes through T-TAP
• Business, Disability and Employment – corporate Models of Success
• VCU – Rehabilitation Research and Training Centre on Workplace Supports and Job Retention
Both Mike and Katherine provided us with some great contacts: The Midwest Institute of Telecommuting - http://www.mite.org/ and Expiditor Corporation - http://www.expeditercorp.com/.
Definitely wish to keep in touch with Mike and Katherine as a great source of continuous development in this area.
They have been working with organisations on telework projects which started about 6 to 7 years ago.
They ran these as pilot projects looking at what made a good home working teleworker, looking at the characteristics of a teleworker.
They did a survey on businesses in their local area to find out what policies and procedures they currently have in place around flexible working allowing employees to work from home. They ran a placement project with about 100 placements, a large percentage of these being veterans.
They raised the awareness of teleworking – pointing out that even now employers see teleworking as a reward to employees rather than being a necessity.
They carried out telework assessments, a process of vetting people to see how their typing skills and communications skills qualified, testing them on their telephone skills, customer service skills etc.
Katherine had more involvement on the self employment side and mentioned the ‘Self Employment Grant’ which was made available through the Office Disability and Policy Dept which was trialled throughout New York, Alaska and Florida.
The availability of Developed Start-up Projects – whereby interested people looking at going self employed can still receive Social Security Work Incentive payments and put money aside separately to save towards starting a new business while staying on benefits.
Katherine suggested that we pull together case studies showing the different processes/services/projects we work on for clients, what the procedure is, how long each piece of work takes, showing specifically what can be achieved. This in turn could be used as a PR marketing piece to raise awareness of home working virtual assistance and teleworking.
Mike and Katherine provided us with a fantastic pack to take away including:
• Video on ‘Self Employment – Start-up in the USA’
• Start-up resource documents on self employment
• A mentor guide to Increase Customized Employment Outcomes through T-TAP
• Business, Disability and Employment – corporate Models of Success
• VCU – Rehabilitation Research and Training Centre on Workplace Supports and Job Retention
Both Mike and Katherine provided us with some great contacts: The Midwest Institute of Telecommuting - http://www.mite.org/ and Expiditor Corporation - http://www.expeditercorp.com/.
Definitely wish to keep in touch with Mike and Katherine as a great source of continuous development in this area.
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Meet up with Nancy Seeger at Arts Assistance in Washington DC
Had a great meeting with Nancy Seeger from Arts Assistance at a local Starbucks Cafe near our hotel.
A fantastic opportunity to ask lots of questions about being a Virtual Assistant based in Washington DC and how her business has grown specialising in offering web design and graphic design to performing arts businesses.
Nancy's involvement with the IVAA International Virtual Assistance Association was a good insight especially her background in creating the web pages for the forth coming IVAA Summit in October.
Nancy passed on some great contacts within the VA Industry based in different States who I shall be making contact with.
Our last day in Washington DC to travel down to Richmond Virginia on Saturday 11 September.
Both me and Jamie really loved Washington a fantastic place to visit with so much to see. The people are incredibly cheerful and friendly and having such wonderful weather really made our visit memorable. Can't wait to visit again towards the end of our visit in October.
A fantastic opportunity to ask lots of questions about being a Virtual Assistant based in Washington DC and how her business has grown specialising in offering web design and graphic design to performing arts businesses.
Nancy's involvement with the IVAA International Virtual Assistance Association was a good insight especially her background in creating the web pages for the forth coming IVAA Summit in October.
Nancy passed on some great contacts within the VA Industry based in different States who I shall be making contact with.
Our last day in Washington DC to travel down to Richmond Virginia on Saturday 11 September.
Both me and Jamie really loved Washington a fantastic place to visit with so much to see. The people are incredibly cheerful and friendly and having such wonderful weather really made our visit memorable. Can't wait to visit again towards the end of our visit in October.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Arrived in Washington DC
Arrived safely in Washington DC (first time flying too), what a fantastic city. Spent the first few days visiting the White House, Lincoln Monument and many of the other wonderful memorials and monuments. Very hot temperatures of 95 degrees looking to get cooler. We have a conference call early Friday morning and our first meeting with Nancy Seegar from Arts Assistance. Nancy will be taking us to her new offices based in Fairfax - looking forward to our first meet up.
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Tracey Clarke is delighted to announce the award for the 2010 Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship.
A very special research project which we were granted in January this year giving me the overwhelming opportunity to visit the USA for 5 weeks looking at how the Virtual Assistance Industry operates.
In the US the Virtual Assistance Industry is well established and recognised among businesses. We will be looking at how it continues to develop on an enormous scale, providing great benefit to businesses and helping those people who wish to set up in business working from their own home offices.
Our itinerary includes visiting colleges & universities, businesses & organisations who already work with Virtual Assistants, Chambers of Commerce, exhibitions, international VA Associations and established Virtual Assistants in the States of Virginia, Texas and California.
We are really excited and looking forward to meeting up with fellow VA's who we have already made good contact with through the Virtual Office Professional Degree Course at Sierra College in Sacramento along with Dr Cyndi Dunn and Roietta Fulgham, President of the California Business Education Association.
Our main aim is to look at how the US Virtual Assistance Industry impacts on businesses and the home working VA's; what new ideas and advancements we can bring back to the UK, helping to raise the much needed awareness to businesses of this change in working culture.
A very special research project which we were granted in January this year giving me the overwhelming opportunity to visit the USA for 5 weeks looking at how the Virtual Assistance Industry operates.
In the US the Virtual Assistance Industry is well established and recognised among businesses. We will be looking at how it continues to develop on an enormous scale, providing great benefit to businesses and helping those people who wish to set up in business working from their own home offices.
Our itinerary includes visiting colleges & universities, businesses & organisations who already work with Virtual Assistants, Chambers of Commerce, exhibitions, international VA Associations and established Virtual Assistants in the States of Virginia, Texas and California.
We are really excited and looking forward to meeting up with fellow VA's who we have already made good contact with through the Virtual Office Professional Degree Course at Sierra College in Sacramento along with Dr Cyndi Dunn and Roietta Fulgham, President of the California Business Education Association.
Our main aim is to look at how the US Virtual Assistance Industry impacts on businesses and the home working VA's; what new ideas and advancements we can bring back to the UK, helping to raise the much needed awareness to businesses of this change in working culture.
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Where we will be visiting in the USA
